First of all, the postal workers involved in this dispute are members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Union of Postal Communication Employees. These workers provide administrative services and have never been on strike before.

The day before the company went under the company's lead lawyer did a quick walk by interview. His quick comment of "...do the unions think we are joking..." sent chills down my spine. It was one of the rare occassions were I've seen a company being brutally honest. The next day, Canada 3000 went out of business.

We had another classic example of a union not understanding the bigger picture in Edmonton. A local meat packing operation was out on strike. The employer put forward their final offer with the condition that if it was not accepted they would shutdown the operation. The union said no, the operation shutdown and moved to Saskachewan to setup a union shop. The company had talked with a Saskachewan union that wanted the work and accepted the offer to get the jobs. Over 200 people were out of work in Edmonton. Over 200 unionized jobs were created in Saskachewan.

Yes, the Canadian Postal workers have the right strike. Yes, they have a few valid grievances, that taken out of context, are worth striking over. But does the union seriously think they can continue the strikes without lossing business and lossing staff.

It would be interesting to see the job loss stats at Canada Post for the last ten years.

Why is it everyone supports the right to strike until someone excercises it?

Why is it no denies corporations the right to strike?

Actually Canada Post doesn't have much choice in terms of relocation outside the country. By the same token, if you live in Canada you're on the receiving end of a monopoly. Unlike the burger joint analogy the Postal Service does not have a competitor on the next block (not strictly true since there are private courier services that will do whatever Canada Post will do but for a lot more money - this latter means that any strike impacts the "public" much more than large corporations who already send much of their mail via courier).

On the other hand if we look at "companies" in general, whatever that may mean, I'm not sure how you can stop them from relocating. If you want to pass a law that says that under certain circumstances they can't leave, I can't imagine anyone from outside of Canada ever setting up any sort of significant operations in Canada -- at the risk of sounding cynical, I'm not taking sides here but I learned a long time ago that there are a lot of incredibly bright people out there who are paid unbelievable amounts of money to figure out how to work "with" any set of rules to achieve the desired objective. To be quite honest, I can't come up with a way to stop companies from relocating that I haven't been able to circumvent within 5 minutes and that's not even what I do for a living. Wait 'til you meet the pro's.